In Marrakech's ancient Jewish quarter, Dar One hotel uses sleek, hand-crafted décor to channel Paris' trendy Marais, another one-time Jewish neighbourhood turned chic district. Proprietor Jean Peres is responsible for the stylish, relaxed approach to luxury, designing all the furniture and enlisting local artisans to bring his ideas to life. The result is textiles with bold stripes, angular leather furniture and white Stark-like bathrooms. At the end of a gated alleyway in the medina, this cosmopolitan guesthouse is one of the city’s best-kept secrets.

Smith Extra

Facilities

Need to know

Rooms

Check–Out

Rates

Double rooms from $86.89 (€82), excluding tax at 10 per cent. Please note the hotel charges an additional local city tax of €2.00 per person per night on check-out.

Price information

If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 21 days.

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (EUR90.00), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

More details

Rates include breakfast. You can rent the riad exclusively for €530–€820 a day, accommodating 12 people.

Also

Owner Jean’s impeccably behaved dogs Loukoum and Tosca follow him loyally wherever he goes. He visits the riad every morning to help guests plan their day, and then hands over to his excellent team of staff. Book an airport transfer for €15 a person; almost as cheap as a regular taxi and much less of a headache. A vase of fresh roses will appear in your room every day.

At the hotel

Courtyard with water feature, roof terrace with sun loungers and daybeds, free WiFi, open fireplaces, AC, hammam or beauty treatments and in-room massages by arrangement.

Our favourite rooms

Dune has an open fireplace, exposed beams, a sexy black marble sink and big tadelakt bath. Darkly elegant Mirage has a deep grey tadelakt bath and modern chandelier. Colourful St Ex (named after author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry) features chocolate browns, cornflower blues and tomato reds. Sirocco is up on roof-terrace level, with a putty-coloured suede headboard, a red rug and stripey lampshades. All the rooms are about the same size, apart from Petit Prince, which is a touch smaller (and therefore costs a bit less).

Poolside

No pool, but you can dip swollen feet into the courtyard fountain or freshen up after sunbathing on the roof with an alfresco shower.

Packing tips

There are sunhats to borrow on the roof terrace, so don’t worry if you forget yours. Bring comfy pumps or trainers for exploring the medina on foot, and a French phrasebook will come in handy.

Also

Between 22 December and 6 January the riad must be booked in its entirety, for a minimum of five nights.

Children

Welcome. Cots and extra beds are charged at €30 a night for children staying in parents’ rooms. Sirocco on the roof terrace is the best room for families, although this designer den is more of an adults retreat. Babysitting can be arranged.

Dress Code

Hotel restaurant

Take breakfast on the roof terrace or at a communal table in the salon. If you want to dine at the riad, a Morrocan three-course menu costs Dhs250 a head, and features tasty salads, aromatic tagines with couscous and fresh, fruity desserts.

Hotel bar

Aperitifs are served each day and you can order beer, wine or champagne to drink wherever you please – we like the cosy lounge with its open fireplace.

Last orders

There are no rules here: take breakfast whenever and wherever you like. You’ll have to give a few hours’ notice if you want lunch or dinner, however, so that cooks Meriem and Asma can pop out to buy fresh ingredients.

Room service

None, but a porter is on hand 24 hours a day if you need anything.

Location

Address

Dar One

19 Derb Jemaa el Kebir, Hay Salam, Medina,

40030

Marrakech

Morocco

Planes

Marrakech’s Menara Airport is 6km from the city centre. Gety there from the UK and other parts of Europe with British Airways (www.ba.com) or Royal Air Maroc (www.royalairmaroc.com). Taxis from the airport to the city centre take 20 minutes and cost around €12 – make sure you agree a price before setting off to avoid being overcharged.

Trains

The Moroccan state railway, ONCF (www.oncf.ma), runs inexpensive (but limited) services to Marrakech from Casablanca, Fez and Tangier. Look for TCR (Train Climatisé Rapide) trains to guarantee air-conditioning in summer. You’ll find plenty of taxis waiting at the station on Avenue Hassan II.

Automobiles

Driving is not advised in the congested centre of Marrakech and parking around the hotel can be difficult. Should you want your own wheels however, there are hire desks at the airport. Follow Avenue de la Menara into the city.

Worth getting out of bed for

Just round the corner, you’ve got the Palais de Bahia, Royal Palace and the Kasbah to visit, and a walk of mere minutes will get you to the Koutoubia mosque and Djemaa el Fna.

Jean and his team at Dar One can sort out city guides or hiking daytrips into the mountains, where you’ll probably spot wild monkeys, and then have lunch in a Berber village (about Dhs200 a person), as well as longer expeditions exploring little-visited parts of Morocco, perhaps combining camel riding and camping in the desert. He can also help you with bespoke requests, from a picnic party on the Ourika riverbanks to floating across the Palmeraie in a hot-air balloon at sunrise (for about €150 a person).

For our insider guide to Marrakech, click here. For more tips on what to do while you're in Morocco, click here.

Local restaurants

A short walk (or even shorter taxi ride) from Dar One beyond Marrakech's Djemaa el Fna square, El Fassia at 232 Avenue Mohammed V (+212 (0)544 434060) is run entirely by women, who conjure up tasty tagines and fluffy couscous.

Local cafés

Get a table at one of the roof-terrace cafés or ice-cream parlours skirting the Djemaa el Fna at around five and watch the square throng into action – all the stallholders set up for the night as the sun goes down.

Reviews

Anonymous review

Our cab pulls up outside the Palais de la Bahia. It's a corner of the medina thronging with locals and tourists alike. Standing on the northern edge of the Mellah (Jewish quarter), we wait momentarily for our Dar One contact, and we feel like something out of a Dashiell Hammett detective thriller. Surely we should be trading in some lost colonial treasure or tracking down the British ambassador’s missing daughter, not waiting to be escorted to a boutique retreat?

I’m half expecting our maitre d’ to appear in a pinstripe three-piece, a gilt-handled walking stick in hand, a cigarillo poking out beneath his pencil-thin moustache. As it turns out, of course, Michel – for that’s his name – is an entirely modern Marrakshi in designer sunglasses, jeans and a loose shirt. He is also charming, cheerful, and has most definitely nothing to do with a fictional antique-smuggling ring.

While I’m busy trying to work out whether to be disappointed our relieved by this normality, Mrs Smith is absorbed by how perfectly Moroccan the spot is: behind us are towering walls concealing an intricately decorated 19th-century palace, there's an endless stream of swerving spluttering mopeds, there's a hubbub of Moroccan daily life chattering all around. Could there be a more beautifully authentic place to begin a long weekend in this ancient city? Surely not.

‘Don’t worry,’ reassures Michel as he leads us down a sloping path off the main street and into a narrow medina alley of bright orange walls. ‘The directions are simple. You take a right off the road, then the second right. Then another. Then the last left… And then we’re just up here on the left.’ We pass through a private gate, its keeper is a smiling local boy of about 10, with someone who appears to be his equally cheerful grandfather. The deep amber of the private alley is almost luminous beyond a dense green line of potted plants.

‘Right’, I think to myself, ‘I can handle that’. Right, right, right, left and left. That’s right, right? Oh, bugger. Anyone with even half a sense of direction should be more than fine finding Dar One… Sadly, I lack even that. Thankfully, however, my particular Mrs Smith model comes with in-built SatNav. She also comes with quite a wardrobe – and as we turn the last dusty corner past the gatekeepers, Michel catches sight of her new ruby-red sandals.

‘Beautiful!’ he declares. ‘And the colour matches your luggage perfectly.’ (The scarlet Globetrotter is currently the pride of my beloved’s travel accoutrements collection, second only to the aforementioned footwear – so he’s firmly in her good books. Charmer.)

The front door to the riad swings wide open and the bustle of Marrakech fades instantly to a distant hush. Long canvas sheets hang from the ceiling, billowing gently. Around them, softly textured plaster walls frame a lounge of modern square tables, chairs and sofas. Daylight streams in from the open roof while a small waterfall in the centre of the room tumbles steadily into a svelte plunge pool, a scattering of dusty lilac roses bobbing on the surface. It’s one of those moments that forces you to take a deep breath, exhaling away all of life's petty stresses.

Dar One itself isn’t enormous, bearing instead that tall and slender format of the riad species; its three floors spiral up around a canopied atrium to a sun-drenched roof terrace. We climb the smooth concrete stairs to our room on the first floor. While hardly huge our room is certainly cosy, with plenty of character. We draw the curtains on the glass doors and collapse onto the large bed – drifting off in each others’ arms for a small post-flight siesta.

Design aside, perhaps Dar One’s greatest strength is its location. So when I awake with a profound craving for a Marrakshi tagine lunch, it’s only a 15-minute wander over to Chez Chegrouni on the central medina – an inexpensive favourite for watching the mulling anarchy of the square unfurl. And when Michel books us a romantic dinner that night on the roof of Hôtel Farouk, again it’s only a reasonable saunter away (although for the uninitiated, it can be a bit of a pain to find, so maybe allow an extra five minutes of getting-lost time).

The specific details that attract Mrs Smith’s eye when we’re travelling never cease to amaze me. The attribute of Dar One that most catches her attention? Even above the fabulous late breakfast we share on the sun-drenched rooftop? And more than the fresh roses that appear magically in our cosy little room, daily, their ivory petals glowing against the swirling deep grey walls? Believe it or not: it's our bedsheets.

So enamoured is Mrs Smith by the bed linen's thick, sensual softness that when we meet the riad’s proprietor Jean the next morning, my sybarite launches straight into pillow talk. And Jean, infinitely affable and distinctly approving of her admiration, promises to introduce her to his source. As they talk fabric weight and threadcount it’s like watching a linen drug deal going down. Yet with the waterfall trickling away in the background I couldn’t be more content. That is how magical this hip little house is.

For 15 years Jean was a lawyer back in France – but try not to hold that against him. With his two impeccably behaved hounds Tosca and Loukoum by his feet and the haven of Dar One around him, he is in fact decidedly charming. We pick his brain about where to spend the day awandering, sharing the city’s secrets and his excitement over his new riad, Dar White, set to open next year. After signing up for a candlelit dinner that night on the riad’s roof, we leave Jean to it, and we head off to tackle the Red City.

Mrs Smith is something of a legend when it comes to haggling. Further armed with Jean’s recommendations, we hit the souks hard. My only concern is that we’ll return one day to Marrakech to find warning posters tacked up throughout the markets: my better half’s visage smiling seductively above a note advising stallholders to barter with her at their own risk. Eventually we call time and back we trudge, foot-sore but loaded with a stack of impeccably bartered treasures.

Just before the first right (or is it a left?) into Dar One, the local cornershop has a drop-freezer that calls our name. Back in the riad, feet soaking in the waterfall-fed plunge pool, ice-creams in hand, we compare notes: the Palais was certainly a beautiful welcome. The winding amber streets are stunning. The souks are atmospheric, as is the call-to-prayer streaming over the roofs. And oh that breakfast on the top terrace, our rose-rich room, our smooth, welcoming bed... All of this is beautiful and irreplaceable and seductively unique…But this moment now – as our retail-beaten feet are draped into the flower-strewn pool, the cool marble beneath our legs, ice-creams clutched and a chilled bottle of wine beside us, the warm breeze slipping down through the canopies, Mrs Smith looking radiant in the dappled sunlight – this, strangely, will be the moment that brings us back to Dar One. And back again, most certainly, we will be.

The Guestbook

Whenever you book a stay at a Smith Hotel with us, we’ll invite you to review it when you get back. Read what other Smith members had to say in Dar One’s Guestbook below.

We loved

Cool styling and excellent friendly service even when we arrived late at night. Great to hear the birds in the morning. Rooftop terrace and views over Marrakech

Don’t expect

big rooms

Rating

ByNerys, BlackSmith

Stayed on 24 May 2016

We loved

Excellent staff who are very friendly and will do everything to make your break perfect. The location is ideal for a short sightseeing break. Amina is a great cook - dinner can be provided on request and will be equal to anything you will find in the city. Comfortable and cosy room (we stayed in Dune and it's perfect). The lounge with roaring fire to combat winter chills. Fast free Wifi. 10/10

Don’t expect

Large hotel facilities - eg pool - or city views from your room (as with all riads, the windows face inwards over the central courtyard). However there's always the roof terrace!

Rating

ByMargaret, BlackSmith

Stayed on 21 Mar 2016

We loved

How friendly and helpful everyone was. They made our stay run smoothly and we felt very relaxed. 10/10

ByJonathan, BlackSmith

Stayed on 8 Feb 2016

We loved

Rating

ByKathryn, BlackSmith

Stayed on 17 Jan 2016

We loved

Our host Jeans Perez was charming. The decor was great. The roof top terrace was fun and inviting.

Don’t expect

Nothing was missing for us!

Rating

ByKarter, BlackSmith

Stayed on 31 Oct 2015

We loved

The staff! Though ideally placed close to the Bahia Palais, and the hotel had been carefully and sensitively redone in excellent taste, the real joy of this hotel is the friendliness and professionalism of the staff.

Don’t expect

Extensive facilities.

Rating

ByAnthony, BlackSmith

Stayed on 14 Feb 2015

We loved

There is a great sense of tranquility as soon as you step in and all the staff are so friendly and attentive whenever you need them.

Don’t expect

Lighting in some rooms could be better.

Rating

ByJohn, BlackSmith

Stayed on 9 Feb 2015

We loved

Beautiful and quite setting. Staff were fantastic and would do anything to make your stay that extra bit special. The Riad and the rooms were luxurious.